Microsoft Files an Antitrust Complaint

Microsoft has just filed its first antitrust complaint, in the EU against Google. Let's try to get past the obvious fact that this is like Lady Gaga complaining that someone dresses weird and rips off Madonna while she hurls stones out of a glass house. This is important stuff. It could determine which massive tech corporation controls all of our data in the dystopian future!

An uncharitable reading of the antitrust complaint is: Microsoft is totally jealous of Google's iron grip on all the world's information. Microsoft claims that Google is muscling it out of the European search market because it "unfairly hinders the ability of search competitors" to access Google content like YouTube, reports the Times. Google controls something like 95 percent of Europe's search market and has already been the subject of antitrust complaints by smaller European businesses. Microsoft also claims that Google is keeping Windows phones from accessing this same content, to give an edge to Google's own Android phones.

This is tough: Who to root for in this round of what CNET calls "dueling monopolist banjos"? A Microsoft comeback as ultimate evil omnipotent tech behemoth would square well with our current wave of '90s nostalgia. Seems like it was a much simpler time when all Microsoft did with its power was force everyone to use their crappy browser. At least they didn't have an army of self-driving cars.